If you believe in competition and the market process, you know that new customers can come from product differentiation and a better idea. Speaking to the future of the Republican Party, Sen. Marco Rubio hit the nail on the head in a recent interview when he said, "We don't just want to be the opposition. We want to be the alternative."

The rising stars of the GOP are these insurgent competitors challenging the status quo, offering a positive vision that unites Americans around a message of economic freedom, a restrained federal government and the promise of individual opportunity for everyone, not just the politically connected.

This new generation is doing the unthinkable: exactly what they promised during their elections. They bring specific solutions to the table. In Washington, this seems radical: real ideas readily available for public review and comment. Sen. Rand Paul wrote a bill to balance the budget in a mere five years, and he put the specifics in writing. Sen. Mike Lee introduced airtight Balanced Budget Amendment language that quickly became the Republican consensus. Ideas keep coming from newly elected back-benchers who don't buy the establishment's line that it can't be done.

Too often the entrenched management of a failing enterprise tries to repackage a bad product with a slicker sales pitch. But the problem with the GOP will not be solved with a face-lift, a better focus-group-tested message or even a better messenger. As Steve Jobs used to insist, it's about the product.

Grassroots America is repopulating the Republican Party with an energetic new generation of fiscal conservatives in the House and Senate. They are young and diverse: women and men, black, white and Hispanic. But these authentic messengers for a new GOP ran on ideas. They also happen to be articulate messengers that can connect with independent voters not interested in partisan labels.

Not surprisingly, this makes incumbents and insiders in both political parties nervous. But there's no putting the genie back in the bottle. The future of the Republican Party is already here, and it is driven by the customer, from the bottom-up.